Monday, 10 September 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #307 - Race Horses, "Furniture"

"Sisters" could be a Pulp tune from the mid-Nineties, a relative of "Babies" perhaps. That same kind of jangle, song structure and pleasing baritone voice. All calm and reassuring. "Oh, you/I preferred your hair when it was darker" is a bit creepy though on "What Am I To Do?", which paces around the same obsessional corners of sex and romance that Jarvis lorded over so elegantly fifteen years ago.

"World" is a bit of a lysergic interlude. And there is the spectral sense moving around inside the music, a feeling (perhaps entirely imaginary and inferred on my part) that separates Cymric tunes from those in other countries. "Bad Blood" ups the ante with some crisp Eighties technology giving the procedure a touch of the Michael Manns. This ante is upped further, chips shoved in with sangfroid, by a choppy synth entry to "My Year Abroad" - a longing, frustrated look out the window and dreaming of a foreign adventure to get out of a relationship. The album is about how people in a relationship become furniture to each other, I read.

There's a touch of Field Music here as well, the place where the feelings are pitched. This stands out on "See No Green". "All you lovers/Give yourself/To somebody new", Meilyr sings. That carnival of frustration again swelling up electronically around him. It's dissipated and discordant by the time of "Old and New" comes along. Mournful oboe. You get the picture. And this is where it ends - except the digital version has an extra track, "Dresser". There's a chance it's the best track and what is a good pop album.

"She said there's no word for this in your language/And so the only thing for me to do is eat it like a sandwich."